Saturday, July 5, 2014

Sils Maria, presented little more than a month ago in competition at Cannes, is perhaps the pinnacle of the career of Olivier Assayas, a masterpiece of writing and staging, a reflection on life and its representation on the cinema and its relationship with the time. The film tells the story of an actress fifty (played by an extraordinary Juliette Binoche) and her work on a new staging of the play, as a young woman, gave her the notoriety: retired with her assistant (Kristen Stewart) in a house Sils Maria, Engadin mountain resort in Switzerland, she is confronted with the text, the new part (no longer a young girl reckless, but her victim, a mature lady seduced), the sense of the past and the relationship with modernity, the contemporary imagination and the sensibilities of her young collaborator.

After speaking to youth, adulthood, love, family ties, in Sils Maria for the first time speaks of the time. And in particular, the relationship that each of us has with their time, with the present, the past and the future. Is it your first movie "mature"?

Olivier: In fact I do not think at the time in terms of aging for me is the time it is as if it were still, I still have the feeling of being the person who many years ago started making films or even before painting. But it is true that over the years it adds something to the personality, perhaps the experience of the world, perhaps the perception of things, which makes us less intuitive and more reflective. The fact remains that the question of time and aging is easier to deal with when one is a director, or more generally a man. For women and for actresses is much more difficult, there are signs that time leaves on the face and the camera takes as a microscope.

That's why you decided to make Juliette Binoche, her face and her body, the focus of the film?

Olivier: The experience of Juliette let me talk about the weather through a pain that I do not live, but I can understand. On my way to go back to Juliette and the way in which she had to take possession of her character were complementary, as there was a dynamic between me, her and a common experience of the past, but different. To make a living this tension, however, I need a young counterpart, and from there came the idea of ​​the character of Valentine, the assistant of the leading actress. The presence of youth has always been crucial in my films, because I think the film itself is an art of youth: there is something in the constitutive relationship that establishes not only the representation of that period of life, but also with the young audiences. I knew then, that in the film there would be a relationship between a mature woman and a young and that my position as a director would be ambiguous, because as a contemporary of Maria, I feel much closer to Valentine.

At this point it is natural to ask Kristen Stewart and her character's Valentine, the most ambiguous and elusive of the film. As you wrote a figure so fleeting and indefinite, able to disappear from the scene, but at the same time to leave the indelible mark of the absence, the mystery?

Olivier: All the characters of Sils Maria were written in a very precise way, but at the same time modified by their actors. The part of Valentine was actually designed to Mia Wasikowska - and I'm sure even she would have worked fine - but when Kristen took over (which to be honest was the initial choice, then skipped for various reasons and returned in vogue at the moment when Mia was forced to give up the film to contract issues with another production ...) has taken a new form. The ambiguity of the character obviously has to do with what I wrote, but also with the interpretation of Kristen: if she is appropriate in a subtle, intelligent, and I have limited myself to suggest to interpret a character so pragmatic and almost brutal, but also affectionate. For me it was important to feel empathy towards Valentine, because the identification of the viewer against her is essential. Sils Maria in the identification moves continuously passes from one character to another, but Valentine is as privileged; in a sense I have that I feel closer to her than to the character of Juliette, despite the age difference. What interested me in her disappearance was his echo, its resonance: Valentine disappears from the scene, but because of this no end inside the movie, the viewer can continue to think of her when he came out ... this is exactly what happens!

Regarding the relationship between the body and the absence, do not you think that over the years your film has been made less direct and more physical and discursive, also because of the dive in the television narrative of Carlos? In this sense, it seems to me that Sils Maria achieves a delicate synthesis between these aspects of your film, that anthropocentric, say, and the narrative ...

Olivier: The truth is that yes Carlos is a TV movie, but the film I've done: in reaction to the television format, in fact, I felt the need to push me to the cinema. I used larger lenses and wider, because I wanted to shoot landscapes, apartments and spaces where the décor is crucial. Until that moment I had only used long lenses, with an abstract effect, but Carlos I forced to open as much as possible, open, open, open ... until you get to reinvent my relationship with space. From then on I have not changed, I want to film with more perspective and have a greater presence of the body in the shots. Before filming faces only, I was only interested in those, but now I take the whole body into a new and more satisfying for me. What has been of fundamental importance with Kristen, for example, because she uses her body like a dancer. It has an extraordinary mobility and modernity in the use of physical, it seems that you do not work, but the way in which you place on the stage is magnetic, really impressive.

KRISTEN STEWART

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